Selected Perspectives from Central Europe

Postmodernism has cast radical doubts on the objectivity of history, while demanding historicization from all modes of knowledge. Reflection on historicity has thus become a crux of the humanities in general.
Writing Literary History joins the emerging field of literary metahistory. Scholars from Central Europe critically apply the perspectives of hermeneutics, reception esthetics, poststructuralism, new historicism, cognitivism, systems approaches, dialogical comparatistics, Slavic studies, critical narratology, and cultural and gender studies in order to answer how, on what epistemological bases, with what goals, and for which audiences it is still possible to write literary history that meets contemporary scholarly standards without sacrificing the specificity of its research object and methods.

Contents: Darko Dolinar: Introduction – Marko Juvan: On the Fate of the «Great» Genre – Janko Kos: Old and New Models
of Literary History – Lado Kralj: Literary History: How Much Science, How Much Fiction? – Vladimir Biti: In the Name of the
Altogether Other – Peter Zajac: Literary Historiography as a Synoptic Map – Ivan Verč: The Subject of an Utterance as an Object
of Study of Literary History – Bożena Tokarz: Literary History and Its Object – Darko Dolinar: Literary History and Its Readers
– Marija Mitrović: The Energy of Delusion – Ivo Pospíšil: Literary History, Poststructuralism, Dilettantism, and Area Studies
– Miloš Zelenka: Manuscriptology and Its Significance for Literary History in the Context of Contemporary Methodology – Marijan
Dović: The Writing of Literary History and the Empirical Science of Literature – Jola Škulj: Modernist Literature and the
Change of Paradigm in Literary History – Alenka Koron: Time Regained? On Narrative in Literary Historiography – Peter V. Zima:
Historical Periods as Problematics: Sociolinguistic Situations, Sociolects, and Discourses – Janez Strutz: Dialogue, Polyphony,
and System: On the Issue of a History of the «Small Literatures» in the Alps-Adriatic Region – Jelka Kernev Štrajn: Memory
as Fragment Woven into Text – Silvija Borovnik: A Feminist Glance into the Workshop of a Literary Historian.